


Cartography

by standalone



Series: Fucking Political Bullshit exR Coffeeshop AU [5]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, M/M, Museums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 05:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10268834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Grantaire starts a new job.History is vast; yet, so are we.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pigsinspaaace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigsinspaaace/gifts).



> Thanks to [werebear](http://archiveofourown.org/users/werebear/profile) for helping me chart a course up front, and for supporting my cockamamie plans to write midnight fics on a work night.
> 
> The absolute lack of proofing is entirely on me.

**Cartography**

“Oh, come on,” Grantaire fidgets when Enjolras insists on buying a round in his honor. “It’s not like it’s some kind of save-the-world shit. It’s not like it’s fucking _meaningful_.”

“It seems to me,” ‘Ferre muses, saluting him with his glass, “that as ‘save-the-world shit’ has come to occupy most of your free time, you can probably spare your for-pay hours for something less momentous.” 

“What the hell are you even talking about?” Courf demands. “Art’s momentous. It’s... it’s... it’s _essential_ , man.”

Grantaire’s new job is at a museum. Not at the ticket-booth. Not shooing handsy visitors away from the statues. It’s in the collections. Inventorying, tagging, labeling. Discussing art with arty people. Figuring out what goes where, with what, and what other museums have that would complement it, and how to lend and borrow and preserve and present, because art is culture and culture is what makes humans human. Right?

It’s the first job where he’s gone a whole day without handling other people's money. 

Actually, scratch that. One of his first _tasks_ today was to process the intake of a small collection of _assignats_ and coins from the French Revolution. So he did handle those, but reverently, under the attentive observation of his new supervisor, and through archivists’ nitrile gloves.

Fuck it. He held them in his hand—little metal trinkets that sucked him hundreds of years into the past, to when they were part of some other person’s normal day-to-day life while they earned wages and bought beer and watched the world completely fucking transmute itself around them. 

He’s not sure what to make of it, and it’s not going to save the world, but it means _something_.

Enjolras hands Musichetta his card, because he’s scrupulous about that. He’s got the money, and if he keeps his boozing paid up, ‘Chetta can afford to extend a few more beers on credit to the folks who can’t keep up with their tab. Then he leans against R’s side, drapes an arm around his shoulder, and with the other, lifts his glass slightly.

It shouldn’t shock him that Enjolras knows him so well already. That’s just what Enjolras does. He figures things out. He figures people out. He’s not always right, but he’s so fucking determined that sometimes ‘right’ doesn’t really matter.

So anyway, Enjolras knows Grantaire’s not going to be able to handle the pressure of a big speech or some shit like that, because if Enjolras starts in on praising him, R’s going to need to publicly besmirch himself to balance the universal scales, and that’s just not the night he’s after.

Today was good.

Today was _really_ good. 

And Enjolras is just lifting that glass toward him a little, over the scarred old wood of the bar, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to let his clink against it and take a gulp. 

Enjolras is grinning at him. Enjolras doesn’t grin, not much, but when he does, it’s like a fireworks factory on fire—blinding and alluring and dangerous as all fucking hell. 

“What?” R demands, rougher than he actually means.

“You look happy.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Grantaire says, and leans in to kiss him.

*

Jehan arrives and insists that everyone drink boilermakers in honor of Grantaire’s new gainful employ, and Grantaire is both touched by the gesture and deeply perplexed, because he has never in his life known Jehan to drink at all, and starting with boilermakers seems like a fairly steep learning curve.

Except it turns out Jehan actually just wants to sip at a glass of club soda and watch everyone else pound some alcohol. 

“Why?” Enjolras asks plaintively, looking beautifully flushed from the double-hit of whiskey and beer. You can see every drink in Enjolras’s face. This is another of the many many things Grantaire likes about Enjolras’s face.

Jehan smiles. “‘Boilermaker’ is a wonderfully evocative name, isn’t it? I’ve always wondered what would arrive if I ordered one.”

Enjolras shakes his head and chuckles. Grantaire offers him his seat, since the bar is pretty crowded by now, but Enjolras likes to stand.

“Work okay?” Grantaire asks.

“Yeah, for sure. You know how Celia keeps a stack of letters for Lamarque to read? Ones the rest of us think she should see, so she knows what’s up with her constituency, you know? And she reads them when she can, and tells me what to write back, and sometimes there’s a story there she wants to use, on the Hill or in her speeches, and she wants to know more. So today, she emails me a bunch of pics from the letters she brought with her on the plane, says, ‘Follow up, I want a speech on this.’ And it’s all ACA stories. Sick kids and pregnant women and Medicare recipients and vets with PTSD, and I spend the day on the phone, talking to these people, getting their stories. 

“There’s this kid, Hadley, she had a liver transplant when she was four, and...”

It wasn’t the righteous fury that first drew him to Enjolras. Neither was it the exquisite perfection of his every physical feature, although that’s maybe part of it. It was this shit. This caring shit. Even when he thinks he’s lost his will, Enjolras will always give all the fucks.

“...out of pocket, and her mom put Hadley on the phone, and this _kid_ , Grantaire, she—”

“What you drinking?” Musichetta breaks in.

Enjolras likes Musichetta enough not to be irritated that she’s interrupting him.

Grantaire gets behind-the-counter life well enough to understand that this is the first moment in the last half hour that Musichetta hasn’t been pouring drinks, settling up tabs, or clearing away empties to make room for the worknight crowds. Even now, she’s wiping clean glasses dry with a dishtowel while she waits for an answer.

“Whatever’s in front of me,” he says, and she laughs. 

“Congrats on the new gig. Beer on the house?”

He could go for another beer, sure. Let’s be honest: Grantaire could go for another beer at literally any time in his adult life, and probably some earlier points, too.

“Nah,” he says. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

“Really?” Enjolras is too surprised. “You’re sure you don’t want to stick around for another?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says. “Wanna stop for tacos on the way to your place?”

“Later, guys,” ‘Chetta says, collecting a dollar-fifty tip from further down the bar. She tosses the quarters in the air before pocketing them. The clink reminds Grantaire of the dark, vast memory storage space where he now gets to work. All those thousands of labeled shelves, each item tagged with only a few fragmentary parts of its story.

*

It’s reassuring to know that art can live on, with distance. We don’t need to know about the slobs and pedants and fools who stood on the sidelines and watched history crack open like infinite nesting eggs. We don’t need to hear their names or their irresolute and crude tales; the art that survives preserves them, in its shadows and in its vacancies, in the obvious winnowing of humanity that must happen for us to even begin to consider the long slender vortex of collective memory.

*

The position said _Bachelor’s degree required_. Enjolras made him apply anyway.

Back at Enjolras’s place, full and warm, he sits on the couch with a mind full of strange new thoughts, tempered by the gentling familiarity of just a little weed.

He’s been smoking too much the last few weeks. He knows it, and that makes him kind of anxious, but then, the anxious is what gets him smoking in the first place. He was ready to fuck up. He told himself he was ready, at least. But if you tell yourself you’re ready to fail, why even get worked up about it in the first place?

He kicks back on the sofa, hands locked behind his head and brain spinning out over the collections, the plans that his _team_ , this group of professional people he’s suddenly, inexplicably part of, outlined at their afternoon meeting, the long-term and short-term goals, the places he can fit in. At the other end of the couch, Enjolras is bent over his computer clacking out what’s probably an update for the senator. They start at a thousand words or so, and end up at one hundred, every word chosen to do the work of ten. Enjolras respects his boss’s time.

Grantaire’s not really the kind of person who takes notes in words. It’s not how he learned about art—or about anything, really. He learns by looking at things, reading about them, finding connections, asking why, finding more connections, and never really being satisfied that those connections aren’t just his brain fucking with itself, trying to let artistic interpretation gloss over the rough transitions of actual life. It happens inside him, is the point. His ideas stew and simmer and sometimes boil over, angry and violent, but he’s never really considered what it would mean to just let them out whenever he felt like it, and to know people would listen.

Enjolras listens, obviously. That’s how he knew to tell Grantaire about the job in the first place. He knows how Grantaire sees the world. 

Enjolras closes his computer with a decisive click. 

“Bed,” he says. “Let’s go.”

He doesn’t let Grantaire stop by the bathroom to brush his teeth; instead, he drags him into the bedroom, pushes him onto the bed face-first, and straddles his lower back.

Grantaire feels hands slide under the thick curly hair that covers his neck, then Enjolras’s fingers dig into the skin there. It’s not very skillful—it’s impossible to imagine Enjolras having ever had the patience to withstand a full massage of his own, let alone to learn to administer one—but it’s Enjolras, and Enjolras’s hands on his skin will always be a joy. Even when it doesn’t even hurt in a sexy way, just sort of an oddly uncomfortable way, it’s arousing. Grantaire’s going hard against the down comforter.

The thumbs rub furrows into the skin on either side of his spinal column, then work down, across the broad muscles of Grantaire’s upper back. When they sink too deeply into the deltoids, tender from the weekend’s sparring, Grantaire groans.

“You gonna fuck me already?”

Enjolras falls flat atop him, and he’s hard too, his cock pressing against the back of Grantaire’s new work pants which are not made out of denim. 

“If that’s what you want. But Grantaire,” he says, and his voice is so near Grantaire’s ear, buzzy and warm and heavy with desire, “I just. I’m so—” and whether the next word is going to be _pleased_ or _proud_ or _pleasantly surprised by your ability to do normal human things_ , Grantaire isn’t trying to hear it.

“I want your cock in my mouth,” he says, flipping Enjolras off his back and going for the zipper. 

They end up sucking each other off, slow and languid, because they’re not really tired, not exactly, but their minds are full of thoughts and their mouths are full of cock, and sometimes that’s just a really great combination. Enjolras uses his hands and his mouth both, which Grantaire loves—and the way that sharp line of a mouth can bend to accommodate him, that’s yet another thing he loves about Enjolras’s face—and Grantaire just lets his tongue tease at the tip of Enjolras’s cock as it makes its measured thrusts in and out of his mouth. It’s unhurried and blissful. Eventually, they’re grunting around each other, and when Enjolras starts stroking the tight curve of Grantaire’s balls, Grantaire’s throat broadens to let Enjolras just a little further in, and he sucks hard, and Enjolras comes in long, thick bursts, his mouth gone momentarily slack around Enjolras.

When Enjolras returns to himself, a moment later, he looks at the cock in his hands like an unexpected blessing. He strokes it hard—once, twice, and licks his lips, knowing Grantaire’s watching from one elbow now. Grantaire tastes him and wants him.

“Come on my face,” Enjolras says, eyes aflame and locked on Grantaire’s cock. It’s not a tender sex voice; it’s an order.

Enjolras twists his hand as he pulls, long and slow, all the way from the base to the head, and then licks just once at the tip—just long enough for Grantaire to watch Enjolras’s tongue emerge, caress him, retract—and he strokes him once again, and Grantaire, horrified, thrilled, amazed, watches as if from outside himself as his come jets out onto Enjolras’s perfect, blushing skin.

Even after the practicalities of washing up and readying for bed, the memory is impossible to believe. Yet, he was there, and he is here now, again, in this bed, with his arm under Enjolras and Enjolras’s damp curls on his shoulder. 

“Doesn’t every revolution revolve around art?” Enjolras asks, as if perhaps this is what he’s been mulling over for the last few hours.

“Actually, yeah, it’s kind of a thing. This show they’re gonna be putting together at work right now, actually, it’s all about the art of revolution.”

“See?”

Enjolras is usually happy to end on a last word, and this seems like a solid one. Grantaire closes his eyes, because much as he looks forward to it, morning is less far away than he’d like it to be.

“Grantaire?” Enjolras pipes up again a moment later.

“Yeah.”

“You said ‘they’re’ doing this revolutionary art show.”

“Yeah.”

“But when you say ‘they,’ do you really mean _you_?”

In the dark, Grantaire doesn’t have to worry that Enjolras will see his response. He’s not even sure what it looks like. Caught out? Sheepish? _Proud?_ “I’m doing some of it,” he hedges. “I mean, I’m the new guy. But they fucking _listen_ to me. Like, this show, this is one of the situations they pitched me at my interview, when I kind of just started spiraling out ideas, you know?” 

He hadn’t been able to stop talking; he’d been sure he’d cost himself the interview, had cut himself off abruptly to apologize and then realized, to his astonishment, that the interviewer was avidly scribbling his ideas down on a notepad, and he recovered and kept going.

Rahwa handed him that notepad this morning, after showing him to his desk in the funny little office they share along the windowed side of the curators’ and archivists’ wing. From his post, he can look out at birds on the pond in the museum’s outdoor sculpture garden.

“Which of these can you make happen?” she asked him.

He blinked at the scrawl of ideas, pulling out the first few— _music of Zimbabwe rev., Soviet oils vs. brush-painting under Mao,_ something that looked suspiciously like _co-opting: Che @ Urban Outfitters_ —and felt his shoulders collapse. 

He looked up at her eager face. _None_ , he was going to have to say, because for all the useless things Grantaire is, a liar isn’t one. He didn’t have the connections or the know-how to assemble art shows. He wasn’t a trained curator or archivist. He was just a guy with lots of shit to say about art. They knew this when they hired him, but still, there must have been some disconnect between what they thought they were hiring and what they actually got. 

There was no use stringing her on; he could show up at the coffee shop in an hour and they’d be able to make work for him.

“I mean,” she clarified then, perhaps seeing the incipient flight in his eyes, “obviously, with my support, and the museum’s contacts, and, of course, a budget. We expect this show to be a big draw. We’ll showcase a few of today’s big names in U.S. protest art to get the crowds, and then back it up with a mountain of art history.”

Then she showed him the databases, and _then_ she took him across the hall to where his new badge gained him entry to the windowless expanses of the first of the museum’s several floors of basement storage—perfectly cool, dry, and quiet, like the back room at the cafe but smelling not like fresh-roasted coffee but the elemental, clean smell of carefully compartmentalized Time.

He knows the order is false, is arbitrary, is only ascribed after the fact, yet standing in the midst of it calmed him. He felt, there, trailing Rahwa as she showed him how to locate a precise item from the incomprehensibly extensive trove, as if he, too, existed for this moment outside of time—as if by being there, he could see his world from outside, and know it to be transitory and only selectively archived.

Enjolras is flopped halfway across him. 

“ _You_?” he teases, but his sleepy voice is so soft the sarcasm barely makes it through. “ _You_ said more than you meant to?”

“It got me the job,” Grantaire says, curving his hand to fit tighter around the bony joint of Enjolras’s bare shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Pigs, I hope your day is wonderful.


End file.
